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The Life, Letters and Work of
Frederic Baron Leighton

Of Stretton

VOL. II

"I am a workman first, and an official after."—Fred. Leighton, 1888.

"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Doch ein Character in dem Strom der Welt."
—Goethe.

The Life, Letters and
Work of
Frederic Leighton

BY

MRS. RUSSELL BARRINGTON

AUTHOR OF "REMINISCENCES OF G.F. WATTS," ETC. ETC.

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II

LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, RUSKIN HOUSE
1906

[All rights reserved]

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press

LORD LEIGHTON
From the portrait by G.F. Watts[ToList]

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME II

HEAD OF YOUNG GIRL
Wedding present from Lord Leighton to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, who has graciously allowed the painting to be reproduced in this book[ToList]

THE LIFE OF LORD LEIGHTON

INTRODUCTION[ToC]

Sir William Richmond, R.A., and Mr. Walter Crane have kindly contributed the following notes:—

It was in 1860 that I first knew Leighton. We met over affairs connected with the Artist Rifle Corps at Burlington House, and afterwards at the studios of various artists, where discussions took place regarding the formation and means of conduct of the Corps. On several occasions I walked home with Leighton to his house in Orme Square.

I don't think I have ever known a man who grew more steadily than Leighton did. The effort of his artistic life was to remove the effects of a certain mannerism and over-education in his early artistic life. His knowledge was wonderful, his powers of design without immediate consultation with Nature were phenomenal; he feared the facility in himself and went always to Nature, that out of her manifold gifts he should be inspired directly by them. And this constant study had its drawbacks as well as its merits, because in one sense it stood in the way of the development of an abstract power of invention. If ever an artist made the most of his conscious abilities, Leighton did. His character was so curiously simple on the one hand, and so complicated on the other, that a balance between a very emotional and extremely accurate temperament had to be found, and it was found. How far a certain charm of spontaneity was obscured a little, perhaps by erudition and a sort of Aristotelian preciseness, it is not for me to say. There is in all things a balance which, when once obtained, reduces the weight in both scales. But we must take a life as it has been made by circumstances, by early training and after influences; and probably most men who are in earnest,—and Leighton was pre-eminently in earnest,—find their proper issue finally. That the best of Leighton's work will live, I am convinced; that it will hold its own when a great deal of other work praised, admired, even worshipped during the life of his contemporaries shall be dead, I feel quite assured; and one may very justly be asked—Why? The simple answer is that it was thorough, definite, sincere, accomplished. Leighton never put out his hand towards the limbo of vulgarity or fashion. Like Virgil, like Mendelssohn, Leighton was a stylist, and his life's work showed a perfection of attainment upon the lines which he drew out for his progress almost to my thinking unrivalled in the work of any of his contemporaries. Here and there he struck a deep note of poetry, here and there he was like a Greek for his simplicity, here and there his work shows the luxury of the Venetians, the restraint of the Florentines, but never perhaps the majesty of M. Angelo or the strong charm of Raphael. His art was eclectic; still it was Leighton, and could have been done only as the result of great natural gifts, assiduous study, force of character, and, withal, independence of vision. His love of beauty was his own personal love, not learnt, hardly perhaps inherited, but spontaneous and lasting. This devotion to beauty may have sometimes led his emotions away from character, which sometimes is very nearly ugly as well as very nearly allied to the highest beauty, which Bacon says has always something of strangeness in it. The pursuit of beauty, per se, may be purchased at the expense of character.

But Leighton was always pulling himself up; and when he found himself too facile, too ornate, he resolutely set his mind to correct any tendency in that direction by fidelity to Nature, sometimes even to her ugly movements. Excess was not in his nature, which was curiously logical; his mind was swift, far-seeing; in debate he was admirable, always seeing the weak point of an argument at once, and "partie pris" was his abomination. A man so gifted in the essence and laws of form, so learned in the construction of the human frame, so deeply sensitive to line and movement as well as to structure, surely would have given to the world great works of sculpture. Indeed he did, but not enough! One regrets that—still one must accept the fact that form is but little cared for in this country, and Leighton sinned by reason of his love of form; by many he was called not a painter because he did not smear, did not trust to accidents, did not leave works half done—because he was sincere to his conviction that a work of art must be, to last, complete "ad unguem." The present craze for incompleteness, for sketches instead of pictures, for unripe instead of ripe fruit, must die as all false notions die; the best, the rightest will live; and when the present ephemeral fashion has worked itself out, the nobility of Leighton's works, his best, are certain to take their place in the estimation of those that know as surely as that they are good.

How many out of the multitude really, if we could test them, care one jot for the Elgin Marbles, for the Demeter of Knidos, for the vault of the Sistine Chapel?—very few. Really great things never can be accepted by the commonplace. How should they be? for to understand the highest in music, in architecture, sculpture, or painting, the observer or listener must have a spark in his constitution which is a portion of the flame that burned white heat in the soul of the conceiver. How can such an attitude of intimate sympathy belong to the many? It never has, and probably never will. Great men are rare, and those who are mentally or organically made to comprehend them are rare also. The great can afford to wait because they are immortal. In all one's dealings with Leighton what did one find? a noble nature, restrained, charitable, in earnest; and if in many discussions as to the desirability of certain events, certain compromises, certain acts of conformity, one did not agree with Leighton, one knew "au fond" that the attitude was quite logical, not hastily arrived at, and the position taken up was to be strenuously held: and it was that power of consistency which made Leighton so trustworthy. He was fearless when his principles were touched, he was loyal to his associates in the Academy even if he did not see eye to eye with them, and he was loyal to his art and to his friends. If Leighton had chosen politics for his career he would probably have been Prime Minister, just as Burne-Jones might have been Archbishop of Canterbury had he continued his early and very remarkable theological studies. All really great men have endless possibilities. It is more or less chance which decides the direction of ability, which, once discovered, forcibly, dominantly present, must find opportunities for its highest development and achievement in the tenure of the goal. It was ability and natural gifts that made Leighton great, industry that nourished his greatness, and stability to principle which made it lasting in his lifetime, and must for all time stamp his work. The thing that really engages one's interest about a great man is not so much his "technique" as his general disposition and character, which forms for itself a suitable "technique" by which his achievements have been manifested. Should any one by-and-by describe the "technique" of Joachim, the supreme violinist, he would probably interest a few, but in reality he would say nothing really valuable, excepting inasmuch as he touched upon first principles. The "modus operandi" of an artist's life is moulded by his personal aims, the means are those by which he found his own way of stating them; and one doubts very much if, after all, the points which differentiate one man's work from another's are not those which have obliterated the conscious efforts, preserving just the touches which genius gives beyond and above all laws that may be learnt. Verse no doubt is much dependent for its beauty on the system of the arrangement of syllables, and the music they make when harmoniously handled upon the final perfection which they reach, and so become rule-making instead of being the result of rule-following. Hence lies that unaccountable beauty which is the inexplicable result of the ego—that taste, that selection, that special word which creates an impression immediately, and which seems inimitable even, and obviously the only one which could have been used; that is style—the very essence of the ego which cannot be copied, or indeed again brought into relation with the idea. And isn't that the reason why the copy of a picture can never be really like an original? even if the "technique" is identical, it lacks that last touch, that last word which transcends tradition, almost transcends thought, for it is just the thought which has been summed up in a moment of inspiration, uncalculated, spontaneous. Leighton was far too wise a man to believe in the constant recurrence of inspirations: he knew that the moment when the whole spirit is ready to act is involuntary; he knew that to reach the supremacy of that moment, labour was necessary; that in labour is the foundation of the building for that moment of inspiration. One may question if the first vision in Leighton was very strong—strong as Blake's, strong as many artists whose powers of attainment were much less than Leighton's, but whose vision was clearer at the outset. Rougher minds than Leighton's have produced more epic effects, and a ruder, less accomplished "technique" has borne with it more original, more trenchant ideas. Leighton was not a mystic; he dealt with thoughts which he embodied in forms that he saw, but which he also made his own in their application; that was his genius of originality. The rugged verse of Æschylus had no place in his temperament, much as he admired it; the polished diction of Virgil bore more similitude to Leighton's inspiration. Sometimes one missed in his work just the touch of the rugged which would have given more grace by comparison, by contrast. His grace of diction, his oratory, his writing, was sometimes over-refined, and missed its mark by over-elaboration. The very speciality of Leighton was completeness. One has seen pictures in his study only half finished, which had a charm of freshness that vanished as each portion became worked into equal value. But that fastidiousness was his characteristic, it was part of him; and therefore we must not deplore it. His originality was exemplified by his power of taking pains, his power of will to do his very best according to his guiding spirit of thoroughness. Temperaments are so different. Whistler could not be Leighton. Because we admire the one, it is not necessary to decry the other; that is weak criticism, or rather none at all. The spirit which inspires the impressionist is not the spirit of design, but a limited observation in a very restricted area. We can have the Academic as well as the Impressionist: both are useful as foils to each other, and it is just as narrow of the Impressionists to want all men to see nature and art as they see them, as it has been for the Academics to see "nothing" in the newer if more limited system. I believe that Leighton's real love was early Italian art; all that came to him after was the result of growth. His enthusiasm for Mino da Fiesole, for the earlier Raphaels, for Duccio of Siena, for Lorenzetti, was evident and absorbing; other enthusiasms were more branches from the stem than its roots. He loved line; he found it there: he loved restraint of action, pure sensuous beauty; he found it in early Italian Art. The reserve of emotions touched him in Greek Art—its suavity, its almost geometrical precision, the tunefulness and melody of its rhythmical concords. His love of music was on the same lines: Wagner never appealed to him as Mozart did; it was too strenuous, too busy in changes of key, too incomplete in the finish and development of phrases. It was not that he liked dulness—not a bit; he was emotional, often gay, often depressed—excitable even; but to him Art was an intellectual more than a purely emotional system, and he liked it to be finished, consistent, perfect—and those qualities he strove for, without a doubt he obtained in a high measure. It will be long before we see again the like of Frederic Leighton, a man complete in himself.

W.B. Richmond.

June 1906.

I first met Leighton about 1869 or '70, I think. I went to one of his receptions at the Studio in Holland Park Road, at the time he was showing his pictures for the Academy. I think his principal work of that year was "Alcestis," or "Heracles Wrestling with Death." About the same time Browning's poem of "Balaustion's Adventure" appeared, in which he alludes to Leighton and this very picture in the lines beginning:

"I know a great Kaunian painter"

(if I remember rightly).

I availed myself of a friend's introduction, and presented myself. One recalls the courteous and princely way in which he received his guests on these occasions, and the crushes he had at his studio—Holland Park Road blocked with carriages, and all the great ones of the London world flocking to see the artist's work.

About this time, or shortly before, he had done me the honour to purchase two landscape studies I had made in Wales from among a number in a book, which was shown him by my early friend George Howard (now Earl of Carlisle), and I remember his kind words in sending me what he deemed "the very modest price" I had asked for them.

His kindness to students and young artists was well known. He would take trouble to go and see their work, and he was always an admirable and helpful critic.

I remember, on my first visit to Rome in the autumn of 1871 (on our marriage tour), going into Piali's Library one evening to look at the English papers. No one was there, but presently Leighton came in. He did not remember me at first, but I recalled myself to him. He was very kind, in his princely way, and gave me introductions to W.W. Storey, the sculptor, and his great friend, Giov. Costa, and he called at our rooms to see my work, in which he showed much interest. In a letter I had, dated March 1st, 1872, written from the Athenæum Club, he speaks of some drawings I had sent to the Dudley Gallery, one he had seen on my easel in Rome, and he says: "I have seen your drawings, all three—one was an old friend; of the other two, the 'Grotto of Egeria,' with its 'sacrum numes,' most attracted me through its refined and sober harmony. The quality of your light is always particularly agreeable to me, and not less than usual in these drawings"; he goes on to say he is glad to hear I have "made friends with my excellent Costa, who as an artist is one in hundreds, and as a man one in thousands"; he adds, "Have you sketched in the 'Valley of Poussin'? It strikes me that old castle would take you by storm."

I saw Leighton again in Rome in 1873, meeting him on the Palatine, among the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars. He was with a lady who, I believe, was the author of the story published in The Cornhill, "A Week in a French Country House," for which Leighton made an illustration. (His black and white work was always very fine, and I recall seeing some of his drawings on the wood for Dalziel's Bible and "Romola.")

Later, he came to see us when we settled in London, in Wood Lane.

I had further relations with him about the time he was building the Arab Hall, when (through George Aitcheson, his architect) I designed the mosaic frieze. On some sketches I made for this he writes: "Cleave to the Sphinx and Eagle, they are delightful—I don't like the duck-women." With regard to these Arab Hall mosaics, he said that he hoped to have more, and eventually "to let us loose (Burne-Jones and myself) on the dome."

After this, I saw something of Leighton on the committee of the South London Fine Art Gallery, Peckham, in its earlier days, when he was chairman, and helped to pilot the institution from the somewhat exacting proprietorship of its founder towards its ultimate position as a public institution.

From the aristocratic point of view, he certainly had a keen sense of public duty, and probably laid the motto "Noblesse oblige" to heart.

I met him again at the Art Conference at Liverpool, when a trainful of artists of all ranks went down together, and some notable attacks were made on the Royal Academy. Leighton was tremendously loyal to that institution, which I notice is always stoutly defended by its members, whatever opinions they may have expressed while outsiders.

I suppose we differed profoundly on most questions, but he was always most courteous, and, whatever our public opinions, we always maintained friendly personal relations; and I may say I always entertained the highest admiration for Leighton's qualities, both as an artist and as a man.

At the time when the election for the presidency of the Academy was in view (after the death of Sir Francis Grant), it was said that Leighton was the only man, and that if they did not elect him the institution would go to pieces; but probably as president he had less power of initiative than before.

I remember, after one of our committees at his studio, he drove me home to Holland Street in his victoria; and as he set me down at my door, he pointed to a little copper lantern I had put up over the steps, and said, "Is that Arts and Crafts?"

His fondness for Italy was well known, and I think he went every autumn. I recall meeting him at Florence in 1890, while staying at the delightful villa of Mrs. Ross (Poggio Gherardo), when he came to luncheon.

In death he was as princely as in life; and on the day of his burial at St. Paul's I was moved to write the following as a tribute to his memory, which will always be vivid in the hearts of those who had the privilege of his friendship:—

Beneath great London's dome to his last rest
The princely painter have ye borne away,
Who still in death upholds his sumptuous sway;
Who strove in life with learned skill to wrest
Art's priceless secret hid in Beauty's breast
With alchemy of colour and of clay,
To recreate a fairer human day,
Touched by no shadow of our time distrest.

What rank or privilege needs art supreme—
Immortal child of buried states and powers—
Who can for us the golden age renew?
Let worth and work bear witness when life's hours
Are numbered: honour due, when, as we deem,
To his ideal was the artist true.

Walter Crane.

"EUCHARIS." 1863
By permission of Mrs. Stephenson Clarke[ToList]

Having settled in England in 1860, Leighton found that there, contrary to his expectations, his sense of colour became developed; and with this his individuality as a painter asserted itself. Between the years 1863 and 1866 he painted pictures which proved that, as a distinct artificer in painting, he had found himself, and was no longer under the controlling influences of German or Italian Art, though, unfortunately, hints of German methods in the actual manipulation of his brush clung more or less to his painting to the end. From boyhood Leighton's power of designing, his sense of beauty in line and form and of dramatic feeling, his extraordinary facility in drawing with the point, proved his genius as an artist; but it was not till the early sixties that his pictures proved him to be possessed of individual distinction as a painter, probably because the method of handling the brush associated with the teaching which, in other respects, commanded his reverence and admiration, were alien to his finest artistic sense. No later works are to be found more notable in luminous quality of painting than "Eucharis," 1863, and "Golden Hours," 1864; none in strength and solidity of texture, or in beauty of distinguished handling, than "A Noble Lady of Venice," about 1865; none in richness of arrangement combined with the fair aerial atmosphere appropriate to a Grecian scene, for which Leighton had so native a sympathy, than "A Syracusan Bride Leading Wild Beasts in Procession to the Altar of Diana," 1866.[1] Later works may claim a greater public prominence among his achievements, but for actual individuality and feeling for the beauty which appealed most strongly to Leighton in colour as in form, none he painted after evinced any fresh departure.

"A NOBLE LADY OF VENICE." 1866
By permission of Lord Armstrong[ToList]

As early as 1852, at the age of twenty-one, Leighton wrote to Steinle from Venice: "I must candidly confess that great as my admiration for Titian (& Co.) was, yet the well-known art treasures here have seized me and entranced me anew. You, dear master, are so familiar with all these things that there is nothing I can write you about them; but on one point I am fairly clear, namely, that the admirers and imitators of Titian (particularly the latest) seek his charms quite in the wrong place, and I am convinced that the impressiveness of his painting lies far less in the ardour of his colouring than in the stupendous accuracy and execution of the modelling." In another letter to Steinle he refers to the necessity of mastering the capacities of the brush in order to render form in a complete manner independently of the function of the brush to render colour.

"Those who place the brush behind the pencil, under the pretence that form is before all things, make a very great mistake. Form is certainly all important; one cannot study it enough; but the greater part of form falls within the province of the tabooed brush. The everlasting hobby of contour (which belongs to the drawing material) is first the place where the form comes in; what, however, reveals true knowledge of form, is a powerful, organic, refined finish of modelling, full of feeling and knowledge—and that is the affair of the brush (Pinsel)."

In January 1860 Leighton wrote to Steinle: "You will perhaps be surprised, but, in spite of my fanatic preference for colour I promised myself to be a draughtsman before I became a colourist," and in fact Leighton was fighting, throughout his whole career, against allowing the sensuous qualities in his art to override those which the teaching of Steinle had proved to his nature to be the most truly elevating and ennobling. Up to the age of thirty he had been overshadowed by the influence of others in the matter of actual technique in painting. From the time he settled in London he freed himself from the tutelage of all masters. As we have read in his letters, his intention was to do so in 1856 when he painted "The Triumph of Music;" but at that time he failed in finding his real self in his painting of that picture, and fully realised that he must reculer pour mieux sauter, returning in the autumn of that year to Rome to be fed by the greatest art of the past, and to study again, "face to face with Nature—to follow it, to watch it, and to copy, closely, faithfully, ingenuously—as Ruskin suggests, choosing nothing and rejecting nothing." The studies of a Pumpkin Flower (Meran), Branch of Vine (Bellosquardo), Cyclamen (Tivoli), reproduced in Chapter III., and others, were made during this autumn of 1856.

In a letter written to Mr. M. Spielmann, a few years before his death, Leighton describes the procedure he pursued in accomplishing a serious work.

"In my pictures,—which are above all decorations in the real sense of the word,—the design is a pattern in which every line has its place and its proper relation to other lines, so that the disturbing of one of them, outside certain limits, would throw the whole out of gear. Having thus determined my picture in my mind's eye, in the majority of cases I make a sketch in black and white chalk upon brown paper to fix it. In the first sketch the care with which the folds have been broadly arranged will be evident, and if it be compared with the finished picture, the very slight degree in which the general scheme has been departed from will convince the spectator of the almost scientific precision of my line of action. But there is a good reason for this determining of the draperies before the model is called in; and it is this. The nude model, no matter how practised he or she may be never moves or stands or sits, in these degenerate days, with exactly the same freedom as when draped; action or pose is always different—not so much from a sense of mental constraint as from the unusual liberty experienced by the limbs to which the muscular action invariably responds when the body is released from the discipline and confinement of clothing.

"The picture having been thus determined, the model is called in, and is posed as nearly as possible in the attitude desired. As nearly as possible, I say; for, as no two faces are exactly alike, so no two models ever entirely resemble one another in body or muscular action, and cannot, therefore, pose in such a manner as exactly to correspond with either another model or another figure—no matter how correctly the latter may be drawn. From the model make the careful outline on brown paper, a true transcript from life, which may entail some slight corrections of the original design in the direction of modifying the attitude and general appearance of the figure. This would be rendered necessary probably by the bulk and material of the drapery. So far, of course, my attention is engaged exclusively by 'form,' colour being always treated more or less ideally. The figure is now placed in its surroundings, and established in exact relation to the canvas. The result is the first true sketch of the entire design, figure, and background, and is built up of the two previous ones. It must be absolutely accurate in the distribution of spaces, for it has subsequently to be 'squared off' on to the canvas, which is ordered to the exact scale of the sketch. At this moment, the design being finally determined, the sketch in oil colours is made. It has been deferred till now, because the placing of the colours is, of course, of as much importance as the harmony. This done, the canvas is for the first time produced, and thereon I enlarge the design, re-draw the outline—and never departing a hair's-breadth from the outlines and forms already obtained—and then highly finishing the whole figure in warm monochrome from the life. Every muscle, every joint, every crease is there, although all this careful painting is shortly to be hidden with the draperies; such, however, is the only method of insuring absolute correctness of drawing. The fourth stage completed, I return once more to my brown paper, re-copy the outline accurately from the picture, on a larger scale than before, and resume my studies of draperies in greater detail and with still greater precision, dealing with them in sections, as parts of a homogeneous whole. The draperies are now laid with infinite care on to the living model, and are made to approximate as closely as possible to the arrangement given in the first sketch, which, as it was not haphazard, but most carefully worked out, must of necessity be adhered to. They have often to be drawn piecemeal, as a model cannot by any means always retain the attitude sufficiently long for the design to be wholly carried out at one cast.[2] This arrangement, is effected with special reference to painting—that is to say, giving not only form and light and shade, but also the relation and 'values' of tones. The draperies are drawn over, and made to conform exactly to the forms copied from the nudes of the underpainted picture. This is a cardinal point, because in carrying out the picture the folds are found fitting mathematically on to the nude, or nudes, first established on the canvas. The next step then is to transfer the draperies to the canvas on which the design has been squared off, and this is done with flowing colour in the same monochrome as before over the nudes, to which they are intelligently applied, and which nudes must never—mentally at least—be lost sight of. The canvas has been prepared with a grey tone, lighter or darker, according to the subject in hand, and the effect to be produced. The background and accessories being now added, the whole picture presents a more or less completed aspect—resembling that, say, of a print of any warm tone. In the case of draperies of very vigorous tone, a rich flat local colour is probably rubbed over them, the modelling underneath being, though thin, so sharp and definite as to assert itself through this wash. Certain portions of the picture might probably be prepared with a wash of flat tinting of a colour the opposite of that which it is eventually to receive. A blue sky, for instance, would possibly have a soft, ruddy tone spread over the canvas—the sky, which is a very definite and important part of my compositions, being as completely drawn in monochrome as any other of the design; or, for rich blue mountains a strong orange wash or tint might be used as a bed. The structure of the picture being thus absolutely complete, and the effect distinctly determined by a sketch which it is my aim to equal in the big work, I have nothing to think of but colour, and with that I now proceed deliberately, but rapidly."

So far Leighton explained the conscious processes he went through in creating his pictures; but does this explanation record truly the real agencies which brought about the result we see in his finest achievements? I should say no,—most emphatically no. Where we can trace the sign of these processes, there the picture fails in the power of convincing. No such process produced "Eucharis" nor the "Syracusan Bride." The process may have been gone through in painting the procession, but it is obliterated by touches instinct with a true painter's inspiration. All teachable qualities Leighton could teach on the lines of soundest principles. His extreme modesty left others to find out that where his preaching left off the real work began in his own pictures. No one knew better than Leighton that no theoretic knowledge ever made an artist; no teachable processes ever made a beautiful picture; no one knew better that head without heart never produced any work that was truly cared for.

"God forgive me if I am intolerant," he wrote to Steinle, "but according to my view an artist must produce his art out of his own heart; or he is none."

"The chord that wakes in kindred hearts a tone,
Must first be tuned and vibrate in your own"

were the words with which he ended his first address to the students of the Royal Academy.

In the world's estimate of things and people, classification plays at times a pernicious part. Classification in art matters may be tolerated as useful only in the education of the non-artistic. Invariably the most convincing touches escape the possibility of being reduced to so dull a process of reckoning. Art marked by individual spontaneity, emanating from the ego of the artificer, refuses to be levelled down into a class. Critics seem at times to be strongly tempted to fit an artist's achievements into certain classes, because they have previously made up their minds as to the class the work belongs to. Hence the perversion often of even an intelligent critic's estimate: certain squarenesses exist which will not fit into round holes, so, for the sake of classification, the corners must be shaved off. Surely no artist ever existed who evaded being comfortably fitted into either a square or a round hole more completely than did Leighton. Every serious work he undertook was an entirely separate performance from any previous invention—a new venture throughout—and, once decided on, carried through with absolute conformity to the original conception. Therefore any classification, beyond his mere method of working, is more sterile in producing a just estimate of Leighton's art than of those workers who are in the habit of painting pictures in which the same motive recurs. Essentially original in his conceptions as in his aims, and vibrating with receptiveness, he sounded nevertheless every impression he received by unchanging principles adhered to as implicit guides. He had within him at once the steadiest rock as a foundation, and the most fertile of serial growths on the surface. Abiding rock and surface flora alike had had their earliest nurture, it must be remembered, in foreign parts, under other skies than that of our veiled English light—under other influences of nature and of art than that of our English climate and schooling—and it is partly owing to this fact that it is not realised by those who have never seen nature under the aspects which most delighted him, that Leighton's conceptions were directly and invariably inspired by nature. Those who are conversant with Italy and other Southern countries will possess the key to much that is misjudged by others in Leighton's work. Scenes which entranced his sensibilities as a boy, and, lingering ever in his fancy, gave subjects for his paintings when his art was mature, may appear to one without special knowledge of the South as mere echoes of classic art. When he was thirty-one Leighton exhibited the picture "Lieder ohne Worte."[3] It is no record, probably, of any particular place, nor of any particular fountain; but when strolling on a road in or near a southern town or village in Italy, a view which might originally have inspired the motive may be seen at any moment. Encased in a wall near Albano is a fountain which certainly recalled to me the picture as, in the bright light of a May morning, the song of nightingales in the grand foliage of overhanging magnolia trees echoed the sound of the water springing from the glistening lip, and flowing over the clean curve of the marble basin into the trough below. There was the same lion's head which served as spout, the same arrangement of ornament encircling it; also a finely shaped pitcher placed below to catch the water, and—more recalling than any detail—was the echo of the real motive of the picture—the dream-like poetry of the sunlit scene, with the musical accompaniment of trickling water. Had Leighton painted a Discobolus, it would probably never have occurred to most English critics that nature and living action had inspired the work. Above the lake of Albano is a road—"the Upper Gallery"—where every day are to be met men playing the game. Any one watching it may see repeated over and over again the action in the well-known statue. Nature inspired the creations of the great ancients, and it was also invariably first-hand impressions from nature that inspired Leighton's creations, whatever superstructure of learning he added in the course of their development. Living in Italy when his feelings were most sensitive to impressions, the origin of the suggestions he imbibed is to be found in her atmosphere, colouring, and the scenes which surrounded him when his imagination was most free and fertile. Later, when he lived in England, his travels in Italy and Greece supplied him with the subjects for the most beautiful sketches he made direct from nature. No one, I believe, has ever painted the luminous quality of white, as it is seen under heated sunlight in the South, with the same charm as Leighton. The sketches he made of buildings in Capri[4] are quite marvellously true in their rendering of such effects. He made equally beautiful studies of mountains and sea, under the rarefied atmosphere of Greece. He seemed always happiest, I think, when the key of his pictures and sketches was light and sunlit; in such pictures, for instance, as "Winding the Skein," "Greek Girls Picking up Shells by the Seashore," "Bath of Psyche," "Invocation," and others remarkable for their fairness and their light, pure tone.

Leighton's sympathies were adverse to the more sensuous qualities in painting. Often, in discussing the works by Watts, he would strongly discourage those who were, he considered, unduly influenced by the charm of the great painter's quality and texture, from endeavouring to aim at it in their own work. Such a treatment, Leighton maintained, might be legitimate as the natural expression of the intuitive genius of one gifted individual, but was not the treatment to copy by the student on account of any intrinsic merit. He had almost an aversion to any process which obtained effects through roughness and inequality of surface. His genuine youthful predilection, which he retained consistently throughout his life, was for the early Italian art and Italian method of painting al fresco. "To see the old Florentine school again is a thing which always enchants me anew, for one can never be sated with seeing the noble sweetness, the child-like simplicity, allied with high manly feeling, which breathes in it. But I speak to you of plain things which you know far better than I."—(Letter to Steinle from Florence, 1857.)

GREEK GIRLS PICKING UP SHELLS BY THE SEASHORE. 1871
By permission of The Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain[ToList]

After Leighton became President of the Royal Academy he made Perugia his halting-place for some weeks during his autumn travels, while he wrote his biennial discourses for the students. He invariably stayed at the well-known Brufani Hotel,—Mrs. Brufani, with whom he made great friends, always reserving the same two rooms for him, from the windows of which he could watch the sun set behind the glorious piles of Umbrian mountains to the west of Perugia. From these windows he also made sketches in silver point of the distant ranges, each form modelled with exquisite delicacy and perfection, though in faintest tones. Other inmates of the Brufani supposed he lived in his two rooms, as he was seldom seen elsewhere in the hotel; but Leighton had found a restaurant which, like his old quarters in Rome—the Café Greco—was the resort of the artists living in Perugia. There he would lunch, and then repair to the Sala del Cambio. Sitting on the raised seat near the window, he would, day after day, spend an hour or more revelling in the beauty of the frescoes by Perugino. Then he would mount to the Pinacoteca and take a deep draught of enjoyment from the tempera paintings of Perugino's master, Benedetto Bonfiglio, Leighton's favourite of favourites ("They are all my Bonfigli!" he would exclaim), whose angels' aureoles rest on wreaths of roses, and whose lovely work Perugia seems to have monopolised. The old paintings of Martino, Gentile da Fabiano, Pietro da Foligno, and their followers Leighton also loved, likewise the later work of Bernardino Pinturicchio and Lo Spagna, pupils with Raphael of Perugino. Among his greatest favourites were the painted banners—the Gonfalone—which are peculiar to the Umbrian cities. He loved the freshness of their quality—the result of a first painting never retouched—the masterly ease of the workmanship, full of tender, gracious beauty. These days were Leighton's real holidays, where, in rapturous admiration of the art he loved so profoundly, he put behind him for the time the weight of official responsibility, and the no less exhausting social duties of his life.

Had Leighton been able to devote himself to the method of painting in fresco, and to work in a warm, dry climate, which admits of painting into the wet surface of plaster without danger of the wall retaining the moisture, he would, undoubtedly, have felt a freer impulse to work rapidly and more spontaneously than when his touch was controlled by the complicated procedures in oil painting. In the process of painting al fresco, colour, in a sense, models itself—its absorption into the wet plaster softening the edges of one touch into another; hence, over a first painting no half obliteration is necessary, and any elaborate finish is avoided. Being obliged to complete before the plaster was dry, Leighton could not have yielded to the temptation to over-refine his surface; and his splendid power as a draughtsman, allied to his sense of beauty, would have found a perfectly spontaneous, happy utterance. As a boy he had imbibed one great principle, and from this principle he never deviated. He wrote, "The thoroughness of all the great masters is so pervading a quality that I look upon them all as forming one aristocracy." In his sketches alone did Leighton relax from the strain which absolute thoroughness involves; and then, in all the fervour of æsthetic inspiration, colour would fly on canvas, chalk or paper, with a charm of quality and exquisite grace of line and form which, as Mr. Briton Rivière remarks, is the very best that can be obtained from a great artist thoroughly trained, but which condition Leighton would never admit into what he considered his serious work. He writes to his father from Rome, January 1853: "I was deeply impressed with the glorious works of art I saw in Venice and Florence, and was particularly struck with the exquisitely elaborate finish of most of the leading works by whatever master; the highest possible finish combined with the greatest possible breadth and grandeur of disposition in the principal masses. Art with the old masters was full of love, refined,—sterling." Leighton formed his standard from these old masters, and never for a moment allowed his standard to be replaced by another. In certain types of Englishmen chivalric loyalty develops at times into obstinacy. Leighton, with all his passion for Italy, his artistic sensitiveness, his excitability, his finely wrought nervous temperament, and his intense power of sympathy, had also in his blood something of the old English Tory, which made him adhere and remain loyal to the strongest impressions of his youth. Catholic and generous as he always proved himself to be when it was a question of considering the work of others, when he was considering his own he ever maintained absolute consistency with the tenets of his early illuminations. Speaking of his extraordinary sense of duty and the consequent tension involved, Mr. Briton Rivière writes:—

"No doubt the constant wear and tear occasioned by the perpetual strain of mental and physical watchfulness did much to shorten his life; I think it sometimes injured his own work as an artist, because, though a great artist can never be evolved except by years of patient work and strenuous effort to do his very best always, yet, on the other hand, it is often the happy, easy work and absolutely spontaneous effort of the moment by such a hand which is his very best. Such happy, easy work probably Leighton would seldom allow himself to do, and never would leave at the right moment, but would still strive to make better and more complete. He must still elaborate it and try to make it more perfect; and this it was that made his enthusiastic admirer Watts sometimes say, 'How much finer Leighton's work would be if he would admit the accidental into it.'"

A fact, little suspected by the public, certainly affected the element of strength in some of Leighton's works. Besides often suffering from a positive want of health, his normal physical condition was far from robust; and, as appears in his letters, he suffered much through weakness and irritation in the eyes from the time he was a boy. He did not wear his physical (or any other) distress on his sleeve, and experienced many hindrances in his work never dreamt of, even by his intimate acquaintances. These might not have been so serious had he been willing to sacrifice all other duties in life to his own special vocation; but though he realised that Art, the language of beauty, was his main passion, his conscience would not allow him to make this passion an excuse for avoiding help to his generation on other lines, if he distinctly felt he could do so. In the happiest of surroundings, with his life unburdened by public responsibilities, he painted "Cimabue's Madonna"; and, for pure vigour in the manipulation, this painting has a robust quality which is scarcely to be found in any other of the larger works which followed, though these may possess many other virtues, and evince a more definite individuality, than does the early work.

Leighton's art appeals to the artists (comparatively few in England) possessed of cosmopolitan culture—also to many who love beauty, a sense of refined distinction in feeling and in form and in the arrangement of line. Beyond these it appeals also to the great public outside the radius of specialists, a public which is impressed by a sense of beauty and achievement without possessing the knowledge of experts. It is not much cared for by the disciples of either of the latest schools in England, and in France, which have governed fashion in the matter of taste for the last twenty years. In the first place, it appeals but little to those to whom the highest province of art appears to consist in conveying didactic sentiments and poetic ideas through a language of form and colour—to suggest thought to the brain rather than beauty to the eye. Respecting this theory of the province of art, Leighton expresses himself clearly in his second address to the Royal Academy students in December 1881:—

"Now the language of Art is not the appointed vehicle of ethic truths; of these, as of all knowledge as distinct from emotion, though not necessarily separated from it, the obvious and only fitted vehicle is speech, written or spoken—words, the symbols of ideas. The simplest spoken homily, if sincere in spirit and lofty in tone, will have more direct didactic efficacy than all the works of all the most pious painters and sculptors from Giotto to Michael Angelo; more than the Passion music of Bach, more than a Requiem by Cherubini, more than an Oratorio of Handel.

"It is not, then, it cannot be the foremost duty of Art to seek to embody that which it cannot adequately present, and to enter into a competition in which it is doomed to inevitable defeat."

That so great a painter as Watts should have taken a contrary view, and preached this contrary view as that which inspired his own conscious aims, was quite sufficient to secure to it many adherents. He preached his doctrine, moreover, with a most convincing argument, but one which cannot logically be used in favour of it, namely, his own great genius as a painter. Watts was essentially a painter—one who at his best ranks with the best painters of all times.

Mr. Arthur Symons, writing on "The Psychology of Watts,"[5] quotes a popular preacher who affirmed that "Critics who approach his (Watts') work from the side of technical excellence do not interest him at all. His endeavour has been to make his pictures as good as works of art as was possible to him, for fear that they should fail altogether in their appeal; but, beyond that, their excellence as mere pictures is nothing to him." "Now," writes Mr. Symons, "it is quite possible that Watts may have really said or written something of the kind; he may even, when he set himself down to think, have thought it. The conscious mental processes of an artist have often little enough relation with his work as art; by no means is every artist a critic as well as an artist. But to take a great painter at his word, if he assures you that the excellence of his pictures 'as mere pictures' is nothing to him; to suppose seriously that at the root of his painting was not the desire to paint; to believe for a moment that great pictorial work has ever been done except by those who were painters first, and everything else afterwards, is to confuse the elementary notions of things, hopelessly and finally. And so, when we are told that the technical excellence of Watts' pictures is of little consequence, we can but answer that to the 'painter of earnest truths,' as to all painters, nothing can be of more consequence; for it is only through this technical excellence that 'Hope,' or 'The Happy Warrior,' or 'Love and Life,' is to be preferred to the picture leaflet which the district missionary distributes on his way through the streets."

All who knew Watts intimately and watched him working day by day can testify that he spared no labour, time, or patience, in working over and over on a picture in order to attain the finest quality in the actual surface which his material—paint—could possibly produce.

Neither the disciples of the original brotherhood of the pre-Raphaelites nor those of Burne-Jones care, as a rule, for Leighton's art. Though starting as one with the pre-Raphaelites, Burne-Jones, possessing a remarkably fine intellect, a subtle fancy, a rich inventiveness in the detail of design, an exquisite sense of grace, and great genius as a colourist, developed so distinct an individuality that his followers cannot be precisely identified with those of the pre-Raphaelites. Leighton fully appreciated the genius of Burne-Jones, and did all in his power to secure his adherence to the Academy; but he had no sympathy for that feeling in art evinced by Burne-Jones' followers, which is so essentially rooted in purely personal moods that even distortion of the human frame is condoned, so long as prominence is given to the suggestion of such moods.

Imbued with a rare, peculiar refinement all its own, a kind of æsthetic creed sprang up in the later days of the nineteenth century apart from the arid soil of commonplace respectability and tasteless materialism. Burne-Jones painted it, Kate Vaughan danced it, Maeterlinck wrote it, the "Souls" (rather unsuccessfully) attempted to live it, the humourists caricatured it, the Philistines denounced it as morbid and unwholesome. Leighton was tolerant and amused, but could not be very solemn over it. And, assuredly, already this creed has been whisked away into the past by fashions diametrically opposed to it in character. Its text may be found in Melisande's reiterated refrain, "I am not happy"—though the unhappiness does not seem ever to have been of the nature of the iron which entered into the soul, but rather the shadow of sadness, adopted with the idea that such a condition betokens a more rare and tender grace than the radiance of joy can give. Every mood of the subjective has been lately in fashion in æsthetic circles, and is still rampant in much of the up-to-date (or down-to-date, as it may be) conditions of the present taste. This is probably consequent on the leadership of those artists who possessed not only genius and sense of beauty, but a peculiar charm of texture in their work which seems a native adjunct to certain temperaments. It is a purely personal manner, and crops up without reference apparently to any special school of art. In Sodoma we find it allied to a development of the splendid completeness of Italian Art; again in the Celt, Watts, to a lofty imagination and to a Pheidian sensibility for noble form; it appears in the work of the Jew, Simeon Solomon; and is an element in Burne-Jones' lovely quality of painting especially noticeable in his water-colour drawings—and, on a smaller scale of workmanship, in the pictures by Pinwell. It is more a matter of quality than of colour, and yet it is only colourists who have possessed it—most obviously, however, where the key of colour is restrained almost to monochrome. A hint of it can be found in Tintoretto's paintings, where few positive tints are prominent, as in some of the ceiling paintings in the Ducal Palace at Venice. There is a something which this special handling suggests which possesses a very subtle charm, the charm of dreamland,—less tangible, less real than direct appeals from nature. A slight mystery seems to veil the vision like a reflection swayed by the surface of the water. It is less explicit than any real object, and only suggests completion without quite achieving it; there is something left out from the aspect of nature, something added from the ego of the artist. There are those to whom such a treatment suggests a deeper truth than can any wholly explicit expression, because they feel forcibly that mystery is the soul of all earthly conditions—"we see through a glass darkly." There are others—and Leighton was among these—who are so strongly imbued with a sense of the wonderful and marvellous in actual creation that they need no art, no veiled suggestion of the hidden, in order to realise that our lives are wrapped in mystery from the cradle to the grave. This quality in painting alluded to, fits in with that taste in literature which prefers hints to assertions—that insistency on the value of what is, after all, but a fugitive phase in special temperaments—that setting most value on the principle of suggestion rather than of definition, of which we hear so much. The devotees of Maeterlinck delight in the shadow of a thought rather than the thought arrêté; they feel that a further stage of refined culture is reached in worshipping a style you have to get somehow behind, rather than one in which thoughts are fully and frankly expressed. Doubtless it requires a more subtile weapon to catch the fleeting aroma, the hint of a thought trembling in the brain and giving it permanent existence in Art, than to carve the expression of a complete idea explicitly with cameo-like precision, be it in the form of words or a visual impression—the wise sayings of a Solomon or a Bacon, the sculpture of a Pheidias or the painting of a Leonardo da Vinci. The actual visible facts in the aspects of nature, which were of such entrancing interest to Leighton, become of less and less interest to the wide public as the human intelligence is trained more and more through books, less and less through the eye; our modern conditions making the world we live in, more and more ugly and uninspiring to the echoing tune of nature within us. Even if we recede into the depths of the country, we find the signs all round us of the sense of beauty being deadened, the revulsion against ugliness having ceased—corrugated iron supplanting thatched roofing, and the loveliest, most rural spots in England year after year newly deprived of some special charm they have possessed for centuries. Those who seek for beauty have been led to find it in the unreal—the things which might be, but are not. We cannot help it, but we certainly become more artificial as our civilisation becomes more complicated, and everything we see around us grows uglier. It is because the general public has so little genuine interest in Art or love of beauty, however great may be its professions, that the tendency has developed to care for the art which appeals rather to the mind and the æsthetic sensibilities generally, than to the actual vision.

This reign of the subjective has brought in its train the undue monopolising of the world's most ardent interest in one passion. French novels of great literary power secured to it the monopoly in France, and magnates in æsthetic culture have grafted it on to our English taste. This strongest and most beautiful feeling in human nature has been so monotonously forced upon us in literature à tort et à travers—the assumption that this is the only feeling worth serious consideration has been dwelt on with such a tiresome pertinacity—it has been so often caricatured, so often debased in books and pictures, that even the real thing itself runs a danger of palling. This human passion may be the greatest, but it is not the only great feeling with which the lives of men and women are enriched; and surely the absorbing prominence which has been given to it latterly in literature is out of proportion with its real position in healthy lives. Little sympathy seems left for other deep and stirring emotions. In Leighton's art we find no monopoly of this kind either recorded or suggested. He painted the passion of lovers in the "Paolo and Francesca," but with no more sincere interest than he did other feelings; than, for instance, his fervent and reverent worship of art in "Cimabue's Madonna," or in the ecstasy of joy in the child flying into the embrace of her mother in "The Return of Persephone," or in the exquisite tender feeling of Elisha breathing renewed life into the Shunammite's son, or in that sense of rest and peace after struggle in the lovely figure of "Ariadne" when Death releases her from her pain; or in the yearning for that peace in the "King David": "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest."

As the climax of nature's loveliest creations Leighton treated the human form with a courageous purity. In his undraped figures there is the same total absence of the mark of the degenerate as there is in everything he did and was; no remote hint of any double-entendre veiled by æsthetic refinement, any more than there is in the Bible, the Iliad, or in the sculpture of Pheidias.

To quote lines that were written about Leighton very shortly before his death:—

"There is truly to be traced in the feeling of his art that 'seal on a man's work of what is most inward and peculiar in his moods'; the sign of individual intimate preferences and of the moving power which certain aspects of beauty have had upon the artist's innermost susceptibilities, though these may be somewhat veiled and distanced by being translated through the reserved form of a classic garb. Perhaps it is this reserve which invests Sir Frederic Leighton's art with the special aroma of poetry which Robert Browning found in it to a greater extent than in any other work of his time.[6] Whether in his larger compositions, in the complicated grouping of many figures, such as the Cimabue picture being led in procession through the streets of Florence, the 'Daphnephoria,' 'Heracles struggling with Death,' the 'Andromache,' the 'Cymon and Iphigenia,' and others; or those simpler compositions, such as the 'Summer Moon,' 'Wedded,' 'The Mountain Summit,' 'The Music Lesson,' 'Sister's Kiss,' in all can be traced the sentiment of a poet inspiring the touch; not overriding by any assertiveness of sentiment the complete scheme of the picture, but lingering here and there with a wistful loveliness which has to be sought for within the barriers of the formal classic design. And it is this reticence in the expression of individual sentiment, this subduing it to the larger conditions of a more abstract style of art which, though it will never make Sir Frederic Leighton's work directly popular, gives to it a quality of distinction. In such reticence is an element of greatness which probably will only be duly appreciated when the more transient moods of thought in the present generation have passed. His work lacks altogether the sentimental, brooding-over-self quality, which, when allied to genius, is contagious, and gives an interest of a subtle, but perhaps not altogether wholesome kind to some of the best work of this era."

And again after his death:—

"Beauty of every kind played on a very sensitive instrument, when it made an appeal to his nature, giving him very positive joy: no complication of subtle interest beyond the actual influence being required before a responding echo was sounded, because so pure and innocent was this joy he had in the charm of beauty;—so also attendant on his personal influence, there was no power of mesmerism, nor of the black arts. In every direction it was healthy and bracing. Even a Nordau could have discovered no remotest taint of the degenerate!"

It is the emotions which art suggests outside itself which have been viewed by one school as more interesting than art itself, and it is the sensuous qualities in painting—colour and texture—which are the visible agents, and convey more readily these suggestions of emotions in our northern temperaments than do beautiful lines and forms. Our northern temperaments also love symbolism and mysticism, therefore are apt to favour the art that meets a veiled condition of things; and the perfection of complete finish in nature's form is no longer held up as a standard for the student to aim at. Leighton had no sympathy with the artificial, neither had he any with the shadow put in the place of the substance. The actual was ever sufficient for him, for in nature herself he never failed to find sufficient inspiration. The mind of the Creator in matter is what the ingenuous artist temperament searches for and is inspired to record; whereas it is, on the one hand, phases of human moods, selections from human passions, good, bad, and indifferent, which are made to saturate the feeling in much of our modern art, or, on the other hand, aspects of nature's moods given without the framework of her structure, and without the detail of her perfection.

It may be argued, however, that there are among the most beautiful effects in nature those which are not fully distinct to the sight—the shimmering iridescence on a shell, where one colour is seen sparkling against another through a film, or the waving branches of a willow, the liquid shifting of a flowing stream, or the endless effects of cloud and mist in a northern sky. To express this in paint requires an appropriate treatment in the manipulation of the pigment itself. Watts' theory was that you have to unfinish the record of certain facts in order to render the truth of the whole fact (see also Steinle's criticism on Leighton's head of "Vincenzo," 1854). He would, therefore, film his painting over with a scumble of white, and only partially repaint the surface, in order to get at that whole truth which includes the bloom of atmosphere and the veil of northern mists. Leighton is thought at times to have erred on the side of explicitness, and the texture of his surface is apt undoubtedly to lack the vibrating quality which carries with it a beauty of its own. This is partly accounted for by the fact that he had imbibed the rudiments of his teaching in a school whose followers were not sensitive to the finest qualities in oil painting, but also probably from his extreme desire to give expression to his sense of the intense finish in nature.

Doctrinaires of the very latest fashion in art insist that nothing comes legitimately within the province of the pictorial, except the impression of nature transmitted to the physical organ detached from memory, experience, and mind. By this faction the eye is treated solely as a machine. Sound as may be the doctrine that art has nothing to do with what the eye cannot see, or with those facts which experience alone teaches us are there, it is also no less true that the human eye sees, according to its intuitive power of transmitting to the brain, the different component parts of the actual object of its vision. It was no knowledge of anatomy which enabled Pheidias to see every subtilty of form in the human figure with consummate insight—any more than it was a knowledge of the laws of the flow and ebb of the tides, which enabled Whistler to give an actual sense of the swaying surface of the waves in "Valparaiso Bay"; again, it was no knowledge of botany which enabled Leighton and Millais to reproduce the structure of plants so perfectly, that they evoked unmitigated admiration as botanical studies from so high an authority on botany as Sir W.C. Thistleton Dyer. We may be told that what we really see is only the relation of tone, of light and shadow; but the fact that the architecture of the whole visible world, the meaning-full construction of all things that nature builds, is being constantly realised by our sight, makes the truth of this theory at least doubtful. That our eye cannot discern these natural objects without light goes without saying; further, that light and shadow shape the forms to be rendered by the brush is also true: but the assertion that what we see is only light and shade playing upon form, is shutting the door on another equally obvious truth. The eye, gifted with a natural sense of form, records ingenuously to the brain the sense of projecting and receding planes, the foreshortening of masses, the straightness, slant, or curve in a surface or in a line. A complete and exhaustive result may be achieved in a painting through this sense of form, as in the work of Van Eycke and of Leonardo da Vinci; or a shorthand record may be made, as in that of Phil May's sketches. But we feel that in both the sense of the whole form has been felt. However, volumes would not exhaust the arguments for and against the so-called impressionist's view of art; so-called—but surely a term unfortunate and misleading, and in nowise explanatory. Every touch a true artist ever puts upon canvas is a record of an impression—whether that impression comprises the structure, light and shade, true colour and tone, all combined,—or only certain surface qualities extracted from its entirety and enforced so that the most obvious appearances start into relief, giving doubtless a sense of vitality to a work, but remaining nevertheless only a partial record of the object. Needless to say, Leighton sought to record his impressions of nature in their entirety, and this necessitated a balancing of their component attributes. The startling element is never found in his art.

He viewed the influence of art as one which should perfect the life of every class; should purify in all directions the debasing elements of materialism and self-interest; should put zest and gratitude into the hearts of all men and women who can see and feel, by awakening a sense of the perfection and beauty of nature, art forming an explanatory and illuminating link between her and mankind—a translation of her perfection transmitted with all reverence by the artificer;—a perfecting beautiful pinnacle in the erection and development of a noble human being.

No words could better describe Leighton's high endeavour in training his own mind and those whom he tried to influence, than the following, written by Lord Acton and quoted by his friend, Sir M. Grant Duff.[7] "If I had the power," writes Sir M. Grant Duff, "I would place upon his monument the words which he wrote as a preface to a list of ninety-eight books he drew up, and about which he still hoped to read a paper at Cambridge when he wrote to me on the subject last autumn. 'This list is submitted with a view to assisting an English youth, whose education is finished, who knows common things, and is not training for a profession, to perfect his mind and open windows in every direction; to raise him to the level of his age, so that he may know the forces that have made the world what it is, and still reign over it; to guard against surprises and against the constant sources of errors within; to supply him both with the strongest stimulants and the surest guides; to give force and fulness, and clearness and sincerity, independence and elevation, generosity and serenity to his mind, that he may know the method and lay of the process by which error is conquered and truth is won, discerning knowledge from probability and prejudice from belief; that he may learn to master what he rejects as fully as what he adopts; that he may understand the origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems, and the better motives of men who are wrong; to steel him against the charm of literary beauty and talent, so that each book, thoroughly taken in, shall be the beginning of a new life, and shall make a new man of him.'" In a like spirit Leighton sought to arrive at viewing art; and what Lord Acton sought to effect by the general culture of men's minds and natures through reading, Leighton sought to effect in his special vocation by inducing other artists to study all that was greatest in Art from a wide and unprejudiced point of view—making it their own, so to speak, by thoroughly realising and appreciating the qualities in it which make it great. Each true masterpiece in Art, he urged, should be thoroughly taken in, and should be the beginning of a new effort. On the other hand, he sought to make the student "learn to master what he rejects as fully as what he adopts, that he may understand the origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems, and the better motives of men who are wrong." His desire was to guide art into the current of the world's best interests—the current in which good literature is so forcible an agent—on the highest, broadest, most catholic lines. He endeavoured to do so by his example as a working artist, by his Discourses, by his labours for the public in every direction where the Art of his country was concerned, and more directly by his influence on those with whom he personally came in contact.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This picture has, I believe, unfortunately left the country. It was suggested by a passage in the second Idyll of Theocritus: "And for her, then many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness." Sketches for portions of the picture and the squared tracing for the complete design can be seen in the Leighton House Collection. The full-length portrait of Mrs. James Guthrie was exhibited the same year as this second processional picture, which appeared on the walls of the Academy eleven years after the "Cimabue's Madonna." The head of the central figure, the Bride, Leighton painted from Mrs. Guthrie. The following charming letter from Mrs. Norton, the most notable of Sheridan's three beautiful daughters, refers to this picture:—

3 Chesterfield Street,
April 9.

Dear Mr. Leighton,—I was so amused by the little grandson's observation on the picture that I cannot help writing about him. I asked him "what he thought of it"? He said, "Oh! it was beautiful! but you told me it would be beautiful—Mr. Leighton was like a man in a story! you did not look so much at him as Carlotta and I did, but I suppose you have seen him before, and you did not seem to pity the little panther! There was, in the picture, a little young puppy panther, and one of the young brides was coaxing it so tenderly, and looking down at its head; and she was one of the prettiest and kindest looking of all the brides (it was the side of the picture furthest from the screen); and I could not help thinking, 'Ah, my poor little panther! you little know when the brides get into that temple, and she gets married, how she'll forget all about you, and get coaxing other things, her husband and her children'; and I felt quite sorry for the panther." So spoke my grandson (just as I felt sorry for the cripple beggar).

Now, as I am quite sure no one else will take this view of what is the principal interest in your glorious procession of youth and hope, I thought it as well to let you know, that you might give that little panther his due importance (a little leopard, I think he is), and not suppose him a subordinate accessory! That whole procession was tinged with mournfulness in Richard Norton's eyes for that little leopard's sake. I shall see that "Dream of Fair Women" again in the Exhibition, and admire it, as I did to-day, in a crowd of other admirers, I know. I do not mind the crowd. I see over them and under them, and through them, when there is anything so worth being eager about.—Believe me meanwhile, yours very truly,

Caroline Norton.

[2] In a letter from Leighton to his mother, the following sentence occurs:—"Will you please explain to him" (his father) "that I am not going to model the drapery of my figures, but the figures themselves to lay the drapery on, as my models could not fly sufficiently long for me to draw them in the act; it is of course a very great delay, but the result will amply make up for the extra trouble, I hope."

[3] The picture has left the country, but sketches of the complete design are among those in the Leighton House Collection.

[4] Lent by Lady Wantage to the Exhibition, in Leighton House, of the smaller works and sketches in 1903.

[5] Outlook, July 15th, 1905.

[6] When standing with me before Leighton's picture "Wedded" in the studio Robert Browning exclaimed, "I find a poetry in that man's work I can find in no other."

[7] "The Late Lord Acton." The Spectator, July 5, 1902.

CHAPTER I[ToC]

FIRST STUDIO IN LONDON

1859-1863

In 1858 Leighton was represented on the Royal Academy walls by two pictures, "The Fisherman and the Syren"—a subject from Goethe's ballad,

"Half drew she him,
Half sunk he in,
And never more was seen"—

and by a scene from "Romeo and Juliet," both small canvases painted in Rome and in Paris.[8]

Leighton at this time received an encouraging letter from Robert Fleury, from whom he had learned much:—

Que parlez vous de reconnaissance, mon cher Monsieur Leighton? de l'amitié je le veux bien, et je reçois, à ce titre seulement, le dessin que vous m'avez envoyé. Ne me suis je pas fait plaisir en vous reconnaissant du talent et en vous rendant la justice qui vous est due? si vous m'avez donné l'occasion de vous faire part de ma vieille espérance n'est ce pas une preuve de l'estime que vous faites de mes conseils? Puisque vous m'offrez généreusement votre amitié, je l'accepte de bien bon cœur, et votre petit dessin me restera comme un gracieux souvenir de vous.

Robert Fleury.

Paris, le 18 Mars 1858.

In the autumn of 1858 Leighton was back in Rome, and it was at that time the King, then Prince of Wales, first visited his studio. "I myself had the advantage of knowing him (Leighton) for a great number of years—ever since I was a boy—and I need hardly say how deeply I deplore the fact that he can be no more in our midst," were the words spoken by the King—thirty-nine years after this first meeting—at the Royal Academy banquet, which took place after Leighton's death, 1st May 1897.

He worked in Rome till his pictures were finished for exhibition in the spring, 1859.

He wrote to his mother:—

It is my particular object and study to go to no parties, in the which I have succeeded admirably. I go often to Cartwright's in the evening, that don't count; now and then to Browning, now and then to the play, see a good deal of Lady Hoare; and that reminds me that Hoare sent you some game the other day, which, however, was returned, as you were not forthcoming. By-the-bye, when I say I have made no acquaintances of interest, that is not true; Odo Russell, son and brother of my friends, Lady William and Arthur Russell, and our diplomatic agent here, is a great friend of mine, and particularly sympathetic. I see him often at Cartwright's, who is his alter ego; also I know and like Miss Ogle, who wrote that (I hear) exceedingly remarkable novel, "A Lost Love." She is a country clergyman's daughter in a remote corner of Yorkshire, and wrote this book when she had, I believe, never lived out of a circle of "kettles." She is not young, but agreeable and quaint.

I am just finishing the largish studies of a very handsome model here, and am about to send them off for exhibition. They seem very popular with all who see them, and are, I think, my best things.

1859.

Dearest Mammy,—I find to my annoyance that I have mislaid your kind letter, so that I must answer as best I can from memory.

That the French and Austrians have been formally requested by the Pope to withdraw their troops from the States of the Church is, I have ascertained from good authority, true, though how on earth you can have known in Florence so long ago a thing which has only just happened, and which is still in great measure a secret here, is what I can't make out; but, dear Mamma, I trust this won't prevent your coming to Rome in April, as there is no chance of the evacuation being carried into effect by that time. There will be particularly (indeed exclusively) on the side of Austria a great demur and pourparler, inasmuch as the consequences of this step will probably be most serious to her; so that for the next few months we need fear nothing. I trust you will come; however, of course I dread the responsibility of insisting too much. You will see how matters look in a few weeks. I am just about to despatch to the Royal Academy some studies from a very handsome model, "La Nanna." I have shown them to a good many people, artists and "Philistines," and they seem to be universally admired. Let us hope they will be well hung in the Exhibition. Talking of exhibitions, you will be rather amused to hear that my "Samson" has been refused at the British Institution, which this year is particularly weak and insignificant. It is gone in to the Suffolk Street now, unless too late. Neither I nor anybody else has the least idea what is the cause of this strongish measure. I have sent my "Negroes" to Paris, and if it is not too late the "Juliet" and "Paris" will go there also. I think they will be well hung, as they are godfathered by Mr. Montfort, my kind and valuable friend. This afternoon the Prince of Wales came to my studio, with Colonel and Mrs. Bruce, Gibson, &c. &c. Gibson spoke in the very highest terms of my pictures, so of course all the others were delighted!

Tuesday Morning.

I have not been able to answer your letter till now, and indeed even now I am interrupting my work to do it; I will answer all your questions categorically. First, about the brigands—I have made inquiries, and have heard of nothing new since these two cases about five weeks back, and am told that now the roads may be considered safe; indeed, no time is generally so good for travelling as just after an accident of that kind, as the authorities are on the look out: if you go by vetturino, there will in all probability be other vetturini on the road, and you will start together and arrive together from and to the different stations on the road. You quite misunderstood the sense of my letter, dear Mamma, if you imagined that I knew nothing of rumours of war, &c. &c.—so far from not knowing what is going on, I live in a hot-bed of politics, what with Cartwright and what with Odo Russell. I expressed my surprise that you should speak with confidence of the withdrawal of the French troops when the official news of the Pope's formal request to that effect could not yet have reached Florence, for the reason that it had not taken place; with the Florentine politicians the wish must have been father to the thought. What really will happen is impossible to say; they won't withdraw till the Austrians do—that is pretty certain; the French, I think, like to mislead people about it. A French general told a friend of mine that in six weeks they would all be gone, but Antonelli, who ought to be the best authority, told Odo Russell they would not go for six months, though the occupation has already ceased (as the Moniteur expresses it) "en principe." You see, dear Mamma, that it is entirely impossible for me to give you any definite information at a moment when nobody seems to know what is coming next. I should be very much disappointed if you could not come; if you settle to come, let me know in time to look for rooms at an Hôtel, and tell me what you expect to give. My work would not allow me to go to Florence. My pictures for the R.A. this year are three portraits in different sizes and attitudes from the same model, all dressed—one a small half-length, the other a kit-cat, the third a small head the size of my hand—this I have sold to Lady Hoare for forty guineas. It has been much coveted—Lady Stratford de Redcliffe wanted a repetition (I never do repetitions), and Mrs. Phipps seemed quite distressed it was sold. The Prince and his party told O. Russell they liked my studio better than any they had seen in Rome. My "Pan" and "Venus" are stowed away in London.

Besides the three portraits of a model mentioned in his letter, exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1859, Leighton sent "Samson and Delilah" to Suffolk Street. For studies of this picture, see Leighton House Collection.

Later, from Naples, he wrote:—

Wednesday Morning, 1859.

I scribble two lines in haste before starting to Capri to announce my safe arrival here in the middle of the day on Monday. I found here several letters from England; but, as I had presumed, that report about the sale of all my pictures was a canard. Lord Lansdowne wishes very much for a repetition of my small profile of Nanna, but as I refused to make one for Lady Stratford, I of course can't for him. George de Monbrison has very kindly consented to give up his Nanna to the Prince,[9] but is evidently sadly disappointed—so much so, that I have written to offer to do what I could not under any other circumstances, i.e. copy it for him.

This place is in great beauty. I have been received with the greatest hospitality by the Hollands, with whom I have dined and supped both days.

Yesterday I breakfasted with Augustus Craven,[10] who photographed me. He is a great adept at this art, and devotes much time to it. He has a most lovely house here, looking out on to the sea.

I have nothing to add for the present, and I will write again from Capri.

This visit to Capri produced the famous drawing of the Lemon Tree.[11] Mr. Ruskin wrote: "Two perfect early drawings are of 'A Lemon Tree' and of a 'Byzantine Well'" (see [List of Illustrations]), "which determine for you without appeal the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present masters, Sir Frederic Leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any since Correggio's time. But you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained and exalted his gift of beautiful vaghezza." In letters to Leighton, Ruskin refers to these drawings:—

1860.

Dear Leighton,—Unless I write again I shall hope to breakfast with you on Friday, and see and know evermore how a lemon differs from an orange leaf. In cases of doubtful temper, might the former more gracefully and appropriately be used for bridal chaplet?—Most truly yours,

J. Ruskin.

15th December 1882.

Dear Leighton,—Of course I want the lemon-tree! but surely you didn't offer it me before? May I come on Tuesday afternoon for both? and I hope to bring "Golden Water," but I hear there's some confusion between the Academy and the Burlington Club. "Golden Water" is perhaps too small a drawing for the Academy—but you'll see.

I wish the lecture on sculpture you gave that jury the other day had been to a larger audience, and I one of them.—Ever affectionately yours,

J. Ruskin.

17th November.

Dear Leighton,—I brought up the "Byzantine Well,"[12] but was forced to trust my friend, John Simon, to bring it across the Park to you, and then forbid him till I wrote you this note, asking you to spare a moment to show him the "Damascus Glass and Arab Fountain." He is, as you know, a man of great eminence, with a weakness for painting, which greatly hinders him in his science.—Ever your loving,

J.R.

I can't get lectures printed yet.

With reference to differences of opinion which had arisen between them on certain art questions, Ruskin wrote in 1879: "I expected so much help from you after those orange (lemon) trees of yours!" Later (1883) he wrote: "The Pre-Raphaelite schism, and most of all, Turner's death, broke my relations with the Royal Academy. I hope they may in future be kinder; its President (Leighton) has just sent me two lovely drawings (the 'Lemon Tree' and the 'Byzantine Well') for the Oxford Schools, and, I think, feels with me as to all the main principles of Art education."

After his visit to Capri Leighton returned to London. He stayed with Mr. Henry Greville, and while there wrote to his mother the following letters:—

19 Queen Street,
Wednesday Morning, 1859.

I have so far altered my plans that I stay on until Saturday morning instead of going to-morrow with Mrs. Sartoris as I had intended. I have still a call or two to make, and, besides, am going to dine to-morrow with Mario and spend the evening of Friday at Lord Lansdowne's, whose invitation I got though I had not called on him. I suppose that a card was sent me because my name was on the old list. I have since met him (at Henry's party), and he made himself very amiable, renewing the invitation by word of mouth. I have just been spending two or three days at Old Windsor with Miss Thackeray, who has been kindness itself as usual; the weather was divine, and we took exquisite drives. Chorley[13] also has been a kind friend to me; he took me twice to the Handel Festival, seating me, conveying me, breakfasting me, and, but that I was engaged, would have dined me. The Festival was, as you have no doubt read in the papers, most successful, the choruses, considering the enormous difficulty of training such masses of people (2000!) were excellent; the quantity of sound produced was, of course, enormous, still there was no din, nothing stunning, only an exceedingly dense and close-textured quality of sound. The solo singers varied in excellence. Clara Novello shone by the quality of her voice, which carries any distance, and by the correctness of her singing, but to me she is entirely without charm, and left me as cold after the great song of the Nativity in the "Messiah" as if she had not sung at all. Miss Dolby sang well throughout; she was remarkable for the excessive decorum and simplicity of her singing. She finishes a phrase with great breadth; her voice, to some people disagreeable, is to me very simpatica, and she gave me altogether the greatest pleasure. Sims Reeves, whom but a few days back I heard sing so badly at Liverpool, astounded me here by the remarkable care and study he brought to bear on his solos. He sang in the "Messiah," beginning with "Behold and see if there be any sorrow," &c. He sang exquisitely; and in the "Israel" he sang "The enemy said" (a very ungrateful song) as well as possible. He was vociferously encored, and well deserved it. —— was simply abominable, without a redeeming point. ——, though less aggressively bad, was too insignificant to say much about at all. Of course, altogether, the solos, especially the more vigorous ones, were too weak for the choruses; that could not be otherwise short of having four pair of Lablache lungs. Costa led to perfection; it was a sight to see him.

Friday, Paris.

Dearest Mamma,—I write you a few lines just to announce my safe return to Paris. You have no doubt by this time got the box back again. Henry was, as always, very kind to me, and I spent three days very simply at his house. I had intended, when I left this, to stay only two days in London, but those days being Saturday and Sunday, I remembered that all the Galleries were shut, and therefore, being most anxious to see the new Veronese, I stayed over Monday. I was delighted with the pictures in the National Gallery and also at Marlborough House, but the annual exhibition at the British Institution is deplorable. I have decided, on the advice of Buckner, Colnaghi, and others, to send my "Niggers" ("A Negro Dance"—water-colour—from sketch made in Algiers) to the Suffolk Street Exhibition (where I shall be well hung through Buckner's intervention) if I get done in time: it will be a hard race, as the Exhibition opens a month sooner than the R.A.

I reached home Tuesday evening at 10½ o'clock, after a good passage; I was, however, suffering from a shocking indigestion, and, to crown all, was kept awake till four in the morning by a ball immediately under my bed. Next morning I had to paint away at Gallatti (my model) willy nilly (particularly nilly), feeling seedy and frightfully cross. However, my "Gehazi" is now as near as possible finished, and to-morrow I go in for the "Niggers." I hope, dear Mamma, you will let me hear at once what Lina or Suth. write; I am most anxious to hear more.

Good-bye, dear Mamma. Best love to all from your most affectionate

Fred.

Friday, 26th.

I am happy to say I have just done my "Niggers," and though too late for the ordinary mode of conveyance on account of an accident in the papers, I am saved by the exceeding kindness of a secretary of the Sardinian Embassy, a great friend of mine; it will be taken over on Monday night by a messenger under the seals of the Embassy, and will just arrive in time. On Sunday I hope to show it to Monfort, Fleury, and Scheffer. I will let you know their verdict.

From America I have good and bad news. The bad is that my "Pan" and "Venus" are not being exhibited at all on account of their nudity, and are stowed away in a cupboard where F. Kemble with the most friendly and untiring perseverance contrived to discover them. This is a great nuisance. I have sent for them back at once; they know best whether or no it is advisable to exhibit such pictures in America, but they certainly should have let me know. I have written to Rossetti about it to-day, expressing my regret and desires, and have added "my pictures have been exposed to the wear and tear of several long journeys not only entirely for no purpose, but, being shut out from the light, they are even suffering an injury; meanwhile I am neglecting the opportunity of showing and disposing of them in England, a possibility which I might willingly forego for the sake of supporting an enterprise in which I am interested, but not to adorn a hidden closet in the United States." Fanny Kemble was charmed with the pictures, went often and pluckily to the forbidden cupboard, and said she only wished she could afford to buy them.

Friday.

Since I last wrote I have had a note from Rossetti, the Secretary of the American Exhibition, giving me a piece of information about my "Romeo" which can't fail to gratify you. He said that, had my picture not been bought by Mr. Harrison, a public subscription would have been opened to procure it for the Academy of Arts at Philadelphia. Rossetti answers me (as indeed I did not doubt) that he had not the remotest notion of the fate of "Pan" and "Venus." He has written on my request to beg they may be sent back at once to Europe. By Henry Greville's urgent advice I have given notice that I shall send the "Orpheus," as they have applied for more pictures; things were selling so satisfactorily that there was scarcely anything left to exhibit in Boston. I am glad to be able to reassure you about the "Niggers." Sartoris did like them exceedingly even before they were anything like as good as they are now. Cartwright, who is not géné to dislike, is enchanted with them, and says if they are not sold at once people are fools, for he has not for some time seen anything he likes so much. Puliza Ricardo and other "publics" like it extremely. Robert Fleury considered it highly original, and said that if he only saw one little head in it he would say, "c'est d'un coloriste." R. Fleury, you know, blames very roundly what he does not like. Montfort, my most candid adviser, was delighted, and said of a particular bit "je vous assure c'est tout à fait comme Decamps." This is unconditional praise. Again I consulted him about its chances of success in the gallery of water-colours. He said, "Comme aquarelle je vous promets qu'il n'y en a pas beaucoup qui font comme cela;"—about water colour being infra. dig., showing myself competent in two materials can only raise me. Poor Scheffer was unwell and could not come. You see, dear Mammy, you need not be so uneasy. I fully appreciate your and Papa's anxiety about my pictures; but it has too great a hold on you when it makes you think that I am entirely reckless and foolish, and that rather than give in I should tell a lie and say it was too late to withdraw a picture when it might still be done. Many thanks for the extract about Sutherland which, however, I had already seen, Henry Grev. having sent it me a week ago. My "Niggers" arrived in time by great luck. Buckner godfathers them.

In haste with very best love, your affectionate boy,

Fred.

19 Queen Street, 1859.

I have got, through the kindness of Elmore (R.A.), a sort of studio at the other end of the world; I believe I told you this in my last note; I suppose my things will come over in a week or less. I am in great doubt about being able to paint in that studio, and about its having been any use to come over to London without the possibility of a really good locale: however, here I am. I shall brush up my acquaintances and see a good deal of my friends. Don't reckon on my selling anything—I don't at all. My picture is hung so that it is virtually impossible to see it. I went to look at my "Niggers" in Suffolk Street, and am confirmed in the idea (that also of my friends) that it is my best work. I have as yet nothing worth writing about, so good-bye, dearest Mamma, best love to all.

2 Orme Square, Sunday, 1859.

Having got on Monday last into my studio and been very busy ever since, this is absolutely the first moment I have found to sit down and write to you.

You will wish to know some particulars about my studio. Of course after Paris and Rome it is a sad falling off—narrow and dark, though I believe, for London, very fair; when I live here I must have a much larger light or I shall go blind—however, I must not look a gift horse in the mouth. I have had to furnish—this costs me about nine or ten shillings a week; I keep a servant (a stupid, pompous, verbose, dirty, willing, honest scrub) to run my errands and clean my brushes, &c. &c., at half-a-crown a day; models are five shillings a sitting here—ruination!—men with good heads there are none—women, tol-lol!—a lay figure, twenty-five shillings a month; in short, historical painting here is not for nothing; I am working at my "Samson" picture; God knows how I shall finish it in so short a time! Dearest Mammy, I shall have but a very short peep at you this year, I am very sorry to say—I lost a full month waiting for this wretched studio. I don't see my way through my work before the middle or even end of the second week in August, and I cannot well give up going to Scotland though only for a very few days, as I have accepted so long ago. I am to go there on the 20th; after that I must rush back post-haste to Stourhead to finish Lady Hoare; all this will make me very late for Italy, as I am anxious to revisit the north of that country and study the Correggios a little at Parma before going south. I shall be obliged to scamper across the country. I must be in Rome or the neighbourhood in October; I am going to finish my Cervara landscape on the spot.

I am in very fair health, London decidedly agrees with me, and I don't suffer as much as I expected from the obligato spleen of blue devildom. I need not say this is a source of immense congratulation to me.

When the picture "Nanna" returned from the Royal Academy, where it was exhibited in 1859, Leighton sent it to Bath, writing to his mother to announce its arrival.

London, 1859.

Dearest Mammy,—I scribble a word in haste to announce to you that I have sent "Nanna" off to Bath for you to see, she wants varnish very badly as you see, but is not dry enough for that yet. You must mind and put her in the right light, the window must be on the left of the spectator—the more to the left of the picture you stand yourself the less you will see the want of varnish. If you stand to the right of the painting you won't see it at all. Please send "Nanna" back when you have shown to whom you wish, as she is overdue at Paris.

Saturday Morning, 1859.

I returned yesterday from the Highlands, and have at last time to write you a little word. My stay in the North has been most satisfactory, I have enjoyed myself thoroughly, and have felt particularly well in the keen bracing air of the mountains. My time has been spent exclusively in walks, rides, and drives, for the weather was great part of the time too uncertain to allow of sitting out to paint (even had there been time), whereas no amount of showers prevented our going out, and indeed to those showers I owe seeing some of the most superb effects of colour, light and shade, that I ever beheld. We used sometimes to have three or four duckings in one ride, drying again in the sun, or not as the case might be, and never catching even the phantom of a cold, so healthy and invigorating is the breath of those healthy hills. I said I painted nothing and bring home an empty portfolio (all but a flower I drew one very wet morning), but I have studied a great deal with my eyes and memory, and come back a better landscape painter than I went. On my road home, at Dunkeld, where I lingered a day (exquisite spot), I jotted down in oils two reminiscences of effects observed at Kinrara with which I am rather well pleased—one is a stormy Scandinavian bit of cloud and hill, the other a hot sunny expanse of golden corn and purple heather, which looks for all the world like a bit of Italy. Mind, they are the merest little sketches, but accurate in the impression of the effect.

I go on Monday morning to Stourhead, where I stay till Saturday, and start Monday week for the Continent. Please send me a line to Stourhead. How are you, darling? and Lina and Gus? and Papa? Have you had any more drives?—Your loving boy,

Fred.

On returning to England Leighton took up his abode in his first studio in England. Hitherto he had paid visits to London,—Rome, and subsequently Paris, being his real home, for an artist's true home is in his studio. In the autumn of 1859 he settled in 2 Orme Square, and from that time to his death London became his headquarters.

After having settled into his studio in Orme Square in the winter of 1859, he wrote to Steinle and to Robert Browning the following letters:—

Translation.]

2 Orme Square, Bayswater, London,
December 5, 1859.

My dear Friend and Master,—What a long time it is since I heard from you! my last letter, despatched from Rome, has had no answer.

I enclose a photograph of a memorial tablet which I executed in Rome last winter for my poor widowed sister. The monument is of white marble with black mosaic decoration; the four dark circles are bronze nails, which secure the marble tablet to the wall.

When I had finished work in Rome, I went south and spent five weeks in Capri. You would hardly believe, dear Friend, how this wonderful island delighted me. I made vigorous use of my visit and executed a fairly large number of conscientious studies. I also took the opportunity to visit Paestum for the first time. I may say that the Temple of Neptune gave me the most exalted architectonic impression that I have ever received; I shall never forget that morning. The two neighbouring temples, however, are not worth looking at, except from a painter's point of view.

Meanwhile, the season being advanced, I was obliged, with real regret, to give up my plan of going to Frankfurt, and to hurry back to England. Here I am now permanently established. I confess that I did not pitch my tent here without some anxiety; I had not spent a single winter in England since my earliest childhood, and I had good reason to fear that to me, with my love of sunshine, it would prove a little harsh. I also feared the climate for my bodily health. However, "native air" appears to be not altogether an empty phrase, but I find myself, notwithstanding the fog, well and in good spirits. Man must indeed carry the sun in his heart—if he is to have it. Of work in particular, I have nothing much to say. Later, in the course of the winter, I will report more at length.

Meanwhile, dear Master, write to me very soon. Tell me whether you still think of your pupil, and especially tell me about your certainly numerous works.—Your grateful pupil,

Leighton.

Translation.]

2 Orme Square, Bayswater,
London, January 12, 1860.

I spoke little in my last letter of my present work, partly perhaps because of the feeling I have already described, but partly also because I intend to send you a photograph directly the picture is finished, which will not be till spring. It is a commission, and the subject is religious. There is only a single figure, and I would describe it to you now, but that I fear you would imagine the picture much more beautiful than I can paint it, and you would consequently suffer a disappointment later on in my work which would be painful to me. For the rest, I am striving as hard as I can to make it fine and simple. You will perhaps be surprised, but, in spite of my fanatic preference for colour, I promised myself to be a draughtsman before I became a colourist.

And now adieu, my dear Friend. Directly I can show you anything in "black and white" you shall hear from me again, and I shall expect from you, as my old master, the most unsparing criticism; that is the greatest proof of love you can give me.

Fred Leighton.

2 Orme Square, Bayswater,
January 29, '60.

Dear Browning,—It is not till the other day that I at last received from Cartwright your Rome address, or I should have written to you some time ago; before it was too late to wish you a merry Xmas and health, happiness, and all prosperity for yourself and Mrs. Browning in the present year. I don't know that I have anything worth telling you to write about, for all the little incidents which have their importance for the space of a day, all appear too trivial to write about after a lapse of a week or two. Still I write to assure you I keep up my most affectionate remembrance of you, and to beg that you won't entirely forget me. I received your kind letter at the beginning of the winter, and was truly concerned to hear that Mrs. Browning had been so alarmingly unwell; I trust that the air of Rome, which once before was so beneficial to her, will have strengthened and recruited her again this time. Dear old Rome! how I wish I could fly over and spend a week or so with you all in my old haunts. I suppose I shall never be entirely weaned of that yearning affection I entertain for Italy, and particularly for Rome and the "Comarea." You must have it all to yourselves this year. What a delight it must be to see neither Brown, Jones, nor Robinson.

I suppose Cartwright, Pantaleone, and Odo Russell are the staple of your convivial circle; and, by-the-bye, how much more freely Mrs. Browning must breathe this winter without certain daily visitations which I remember last year. I wonder whether you will write to me and tell me what you are doing, socially and artistically; everything about you will interest me.

As for myself, you would not believe it, in spite of my old habits of continental life and sunshine, I take very kindly to England; it agrees with me capitally, really better than Rome. I am fattening vue d'œil. The light is certainly not irreproachable, still I can work, and don't find that my ideas get particularly rusty. On the contrary, for colour, certainly my sense seems to be sharpened in this atmosphere.

I am soldiering too. I drill three times a week, and make as bad a soldier as anybody else. The Sartoris, you know, are no longer in London—a great loss to all their friends—but I go pretty often to see them in the country, and have spent many a happy day there in the course of the winter. By-the-bye, do you hear or know anything of those two drawings I did of you and Mrs. Browning? If so, will you give the one of you to Hookes that he may send with some other things he has? And now, dear Browning, "vi leverò l'incomodo," and will bring this very tedious epistle to a close. Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Browning, to Cartwright and his wife, to Odo Russell, B——, Pantaleone with better half, Storeys, and last, but not least, dear little Hatty! Love to Cerinni; tell me about him. Good-bye.—Believe me, very affectionately yours,

Fred Leighton.

I am hand-and-glove with all my enemies the pre-Raphaelites. Woolner sends his affectionate remembrances.

Leighton writes to his sister in Italy:—

2 Orme Square, Bayswater,
March 12.

My dear Gussykins,—You may have heard from Mamma that I went to Paris to hear Madame Viardot in "Orphée." What wonderful singing! what style! what breadth! what pathos! You would have been enchanted, I am sure. Do you know the music? It is wonderfully fine and pathetic, the first chorus particularly is quite harrowing for the accent of grief about it. Madame Viardot's acting, too, is superb—so perfectly simple and grand, it is really antique. And when you consider all she has to overcome—a bad, harsh voice, an ugly face, an ungainly person; and yet she contrives to look almost handsome. She enters heart and soul into her work; she said it was the only thing she ever did that (after fifty performances) had not given her a moment's ennui. I am afraid there is no chance of her singing it in England this year, if at all; I don't believe the Covent Garden audience would sit through it.[14]

I also saw Gounod's new opera, "Philémon et Baucis," and was disappointed. Nothing but the care and distinction of the workmanship redeems it from being a bore; the subject is ill adapted for the stage, and is dragged through three acts with portentous efforts. Striking melodies there are few, charming accompaniments many; all the pretty music (or nearly) is in the orchestra—c'est la sauce qui fait avaler le poisson. The introductions to the first and second acts, but particularly the latter (a little motif on the oboë), are charming; there is also a capital chorus. All this, however, is an impression after one hearing; I might alter my mind on hearing it oftener, but I think not.

In the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1860 Leighton sent one picture only, "Sunrise—Capri."

Translation.]

2 Orme Square, September 15, 1860.

My very dear Friend,—I was almost afraid that you would think that I had entirely forgotten you, but this would be a very undeserved interpretation of my long silence. No, my dear Master, you still live in my constant memory, in my most grateful recollection.

When I last wrote, I promised to send you a photograph of my large picture. This work has taken up my time far beyond my expectations, and I always put off writing in order not to send you an empty letter. At last it is thus far, and I enclose both the large photograph and some little ones, in the hope that you, dear Master, will be interested also in the unimportant works of your old pupil.

Have I already told you the subject of my religious picture? I think not. At the turning-point of a very critical illness, the lady who commissioned my picture dreamt that she, as a disembodied spirit, soared up heavenwards in the night.[15] Suddenly she was aware of a point of light in the far vault of heaven. This light grew, developed, and soon she saw coming forth from the night the shining form of the Saviour. Full of confidence she approached the holy apparition. Jesus, however, raised His hands and, gently repulsing her, enjoined her to return to earth, and during her life to make herself worthier to enter the company of the blessed. She awoke, recovered, and ordered the picture.

You will be able to imagine, my dear Friend, how little contented I am with my work; however, I am accustomed to show you my weaknesses, and I therefore send you also this unsatisfactory work. As regards the photograph, it is in certain respects successful, although it makes the whole picture four times too dark.

I send also a portrait of my sister; a head of an English soldier, who lost an arm at Balaclava, and recently died of consumption; and finally a photograph after a drawing on wood, which I drew for a book, but which has been incredibly disfigured by the engraver. Fortunately I had the drawing (although bad) photographed before I sent it to be engraved.

But enough of me and my affairs.

And you, dear Master, what are you working at? Are your cartoons all finished? Shall you soon begin your frescoes? What other beautiful things have you composed?

Do not punish my long silence, but send me a couple of lines to tell me what interests me so deeply. So soon as I have finished anything new (and I have many pictures in prospect) I will send you another specimen of my handiwork.

Meantime I beg you will remember me most cordially to your wife and daughters, and to my other friends in Frankfurt. And yourself do not altogether forget, your loving pupil,

Fred Leighton.

It was in 1860 Leighton joined the Artist Rifle Corps. It was also then he first made the acquaintance of Sir William B. Richmond (now Chairman of the Leighton House Committee).

December 12, 1860.

Dearest Mammy,—I have deferred until now answering your kind letter that I might be able to announce to you a little circumstance which took place yesterday, and which, though not of any real importance, may give you and Papa pleasure. I was yesterday raised to the rank of Captain; I command the 3rd Company—Lewis was at the same time made Captain of the 2nd—his election of course came before mine; he has done three times more for the Corps than I have or could have done—he lives very near and goes every day—as a man of business, and a very clever one, he has entirely organised the bookkeeping department, and in fact has been altogether the vital principle of the Corps. I was chosen next for having shown some zeal in this service and some little capability for teaching. The vacant lieutenancies go to Nicholson (the musician) and Talfourd. One of the ensigncies has been given to Perugini, contingent on its being lawful for him to hold such commission; another to old Palmer. So much for our volunteering. I wish we had a commander. The next question in your letter I thought I had answered in my last—however, though Ruskin stayed about three hours and was altogether very pleasant, he did not say anything that I could quote about my paintings. He was immensely struck by my drawing of a lemon-tree, and was generally complimentary, or rather, respectful, that is more his genre. I don't think, however, that he cared for Sandbach's picture—which leads me to the third point in your letter. Neither of the S.'s have seen their picture; last time they were in London, having made no definite appointment, I missed them. He wrote to say that when he came up to town again, he would fix a day to call on me. Gibson, the old traitor, never turned up at all. By-the-bye, I see you ask whether I shoot much—no, not often; I am an ordinary, average shot—my unsteady hand prevents my shooting well. My general health is pretty fair. Many thanks, dearest Mammy, for your kind wishes and congratulations on that melancholy occasion, my birthday—it is a day I always hate—fancy my being thirty!!! About marrying, dear Mamma, you must not forget it requires two to play at that game. I would not insult a girl I did not love by asking her to tie her existence to mine, and I have not yet found one that I felt the slightest wish to marry; it is no doubt ludicrous to place this ideal so high, but it is not my fault—theoretically I should like to be married very well.

In another letter to his mother Leighton writes on the subject of marriage: "If I don't marry, the reason has been that I have never seen a girl to whom I felt the least desire to be united for life. I should certainly never marry for the sake of doing so." The same subject is again alluded to in a letter written in 1863, from Leighton's mother to her younger daughter who was in Italy. The letter begins by referring to a servant who was dismissed by Leighton.

"He has such an effect on him by his profound stupidity and intense conceit he can't keep him, for if he did, the irritation would render him wicked if he indulged it, and ill if he repressed the same—at least that's Fred's feeling just now. He means to take an Italian servant if he can find one.

"Fred has received an invitation to Sandringham (the Prince of Wales). If he has not found a suitable servant we are to lend him ours—Ellen's husband, a very superior person. I must not forget to tell you that we saw ——'s new baby, a very dear little thing. Freddy was enchanted with it. He noticed him more than ——, who is a delightful little chap, and after caressing it several times with exceeding tenderness, he suddenly grew red in the face, and said, 'I must nurse him,' which he did for a long time, to the wonder and admiration of Miss —— and the nurse. For my part, it gave me actual pain to see that proof of his strong love for children, believing that he will never have any of his own. He declares he has never seen a girl he could marry. Of course this shows he is unreasonably fastidious; more's the pity!"

PORTRAIT OF MRS. SUTHERLAND ORR. 1861[ToList]

2 Orme Square, April 10, 1861.

Dearest Mammy,—I have deferred writing until now that I might be able to tell you the result of my little "private view," now over. I am happy to say I have a great success. The "Vision" pleased many people much, but was altogether, as I expected, the least popular; the subject, though very interesting, was less attractive to the many, and besides I have progressed in painting since the date of that picture. My little girl at the fountain, christened for me by one of my visitors, "Lieder ohne Worte," has perhaps had the greatest number of votes.[16] The "Francesca,"[17] on the other hand, has had, I think, the advantage in the quality of its admirers. Watts, for instance, and Mrs. Sartoris think it by far my best daub.

By-the-bye, you will be particularly pleased to hear that Lina's portrait has had an immense success, and indeed, on second thoughts, perhaps it was more admired than anything else. The "Capri" and the "Aslett" were also much liked. Mind, dear Mamma, this letter is "strictly confidential," because although, of course, you want to know what people say of my pictures, anybody else seeing this letter would (or might) suppose I was devoured with vanity.

I have just made an unexpected acquaintance in the Gladstones, who sent me, I don't know why, a card for two parties. It was very polite of them, and of course I went. This is a very egotistical letter, dear Mamma, but I know that is what you want.

I am very sufficiently well, not strong, but never ill. I marched to Wimbledon with the Volunteers last Monday, and got wet several times but did not catch cold.[18]

London. 1861.

Dear Papa,—If the Public receives my pictures as favourably as the Private has done, I shall have no cause to complain; as far, at least, as the maintenance and increase of my reputation is concerned. I should, however, have liked the "market" to be a little more "brisk."

Tom Taylor and Rossetti (Wm.), the only critics that came (as far as I know) besides Stephens, were, as far as I can judge, both of them much pleased with what they saw. I know at least that both spoke well of my pictures behind my back.

As for Ruskin, he was in one of his queer moods when he came to breakfast with me—he spent his time looking at my portfolio and praised my drawings most lavishly—he did not even look at the pictures. However, nothing could be more cordial than he is to me.

I bolted out into the passage after you when you left the other day to tell you that one of the gentlemen you saw come in was Sir Edwin Landseer, but you had disappeared.

Paris. Monday.

Dearest Mother,—I must wind up with bad news, which I hope you will bear well: my pictures are badly hung, ill lighted, and almost entirely ignored by the press.[19] Of course this is au fond, a bitter disappointment to a man of my temperament, especially after all the praise my work got before the Exhibition. However, I shall wear a brave face, and who knows but that some good may arise to me out of this? My little energies will be sharpened up and my tenacity roused. I trust in some future day, as long as hope lives. God bless you, Mammy; best love to dear Gussy. From your affectionate son,

Fred.

May 1, 1861.

Dearest Mammy,—Life being a pump handle, first up then down, you won't be too much surprised to hear that after the real success my pictures had on "private view" they are with one exception (the landscape) badly hung, "The Vision" over a door, the others above the line, which will make it impossible to see the finish or delicacy of execution which is an important feature in them. I have not seen them myself, but am told this by those who have. Don't take on, dear Mammy, nor let Papa worry himself about it. Things come right in the end, and I know that many people will be much annoyed at this treatment of me. Millais, like a good fellow that he is, spoke up for me like a man, though he himself feels so differently on art from what I do. My good friend Aïdé is furious. After all perhaps, though badly hung, the pictures may still be seen well enough to be judged, that is all I really want, then perhaps some of the papers will speak up for me. I am glad I let so many people see them at the studio, those at least know what the pictures are like. Of one thing be sure: if my works have real value, public opinion will in the long run force the Academy to hang me—but enough of this subject.

The Prince of Wales saw a photo-portrait of me in Valletort's book the other day and begged him to ask me for one. I have had some new ones done, and mean at the same time to send H.R.H. a photograph of each of my larger pictures, "The Vision," the "Francesca," and "The Listener," which, by-the-bye, I have christened on the suggestion of a lady friend of mine (a sister of Cockerell's) "Lieder ohne Worte."

Landseer said nothing that was worth repeating, though he gave me one or two useful practical hints. He is eminently a practical man, and I suspect in his heart sneers at style. He was, however, I believe, pleased with my things.

9 Park Place, St. James's,
Sunday, May 5, 1861.

Dear Mrs. Leighton,—I know that the news of the bad hanging of your son's pictures has reached you (unpleasant tidings generally travel fast) and I hasten to tell you, what I hope may a little mitigate the annoyance you must have felt about it, that they are spoken of in terms of great eulogium by both the Times and Athenæum. I was afraid that their unfortunate placing might have prevented the possibility of any justice being done them by the public critics, but after all the Times and Athenæum are the most influential and leading of all our public journals. Mrs. Orr's portrait is consistently praised by all the papers, even by those which review the others less favourably. Fortunately, the pictures were well seen in the studio by numbers of people of all classes before they went to the Academy, and excited very general admiration in those who felt no particular interest either in art or in your son; while his friends, and those who know, were delighted not only with the works themselves, but at the visible indications in them of increased power in all ways. They have been thought by all whose opinion is of value a great advance upon what he has hitherto done. All this will, I hope, be pleasant to you; what will be so most of all will be to know that he took the exceeding trial and vexation of the abominable hanging of his pictures with the most perfect temper, and an admirable desire to be just about those who were doing him this ill turn. You will care for this, as I do, more than for any worldly success his talent could have brought him. I think he is looking well, although he complains a little of feeling tired. I daresay it is nothing but the weariness that must make itself a little felt after a great and all-engrossing exertion. His volunteering occupation is quite invaluable to him, giving him the exercise he never would otherwise get. I think he seems to like his life in London, where he has many friends, so many that if you were here you would no longer feel as jealous about me as you once owned to feeling—do you remember? I do not apologise for writing all this to you, for although excess of zeal may be a sin in the eyes of others, and even indeed of those whom one would die to serve, a mother will hardly count it as such when her child is in question. With best remembrances to Mr. Leighton and your daughters, I am, ever faithfully yours,

Adelaide Sartoris.

To his father Leighton wrote:—

1861.

As to the article in Macmillan, I don't in the least deny its value as far as it goes and quo ad the public; it is in that sense very gratifying to be spoken of in such flattering terms in a periodical of some standing, but I can't individually feel much elated at the praise of a critic who in other parts of his article shows he is not au fond a judge; as for what he says in interpretation (I am not now alluding to the praise), it is so verbatim what I said myself to those who visited my studio, that I suspect he must have been of that number. I remember, it is true, telling you before I began to paint "Lieder ohne Worte" that I intended to make it realistic, but from the first moment I began I felt the mistake, and made it professedly and pointedly the reverse. I don't think, however, that we understand the word realistic alike; the Fisherman and Syren which you quote was as little naturalistic as anything could be, and, while you urge me to take up some subject possessing that quality, I would point out that the Michael Angelo and the Peacock Girl both fulfil that condition—to my mind to a fault. I have sent in (or am about to) a formula which I received to fill up, stating what I would contribute to the Great Exhibition of 1862 (International). I have offered the Cimabue, four "Nannas," the "Lieder ohne Worte," "Francesca," and the "Syren." I have obtained permission for all.

Translation.]

2 Orme Square, Bayswater,
30th April 1861.

My dear Friend and Master,—When I last wrote you I promised in the spring to send you photographs of my pictures for the exhibition. I have just received some prints and hasten to enclose them.

One of them (the girl by the fountain) gives, as is so often the case, an entirely false impression of the picture, in that the drapery of the principal figure should be much darker, and that of the retreating figure much lighter. I have called this picture "Lieder ohne Worte." It represents a girl, who is resting by a fountain, and listening to the ripple of the water and the song of a bird. This subject is, of course, quite incomplete without colour, as I have endeavoured, both by colour and by flowing delicate forms, to translate to the eye of the spectator something of the pleasure which the child receives through her ears. This idea lies at the base of the whole thing, and is conveyed to the best of my ability in every detail, so that in the dead photograph one loses exactly half, also the dulling of the eyes, which are dark blue in the picture, gives a look of weakness in the photograph that is not quite pleasant.

The second subject is, as you will know well, the old, ever-new motive of Paolo and Francesca. I endeavoured to put in as much glow and passion as possible without causing the least offence; this picture also would, perhaps, have pleased you in colour. How I should like to show it to you, my dear master! However, you will no doubt send me your candid opinion of the photographs in a few lines, and not spare criticism.

I am exceedingly curious to know how your work is getting on. What are you working at just now? When is the fresco to be begun? What easel pictures have you undertaken? I want to know all that. I also hope with all my heart, my dear master, that your health keeps good, that your wife and children are all well. Please remember me most kindly to your family and all in Frankfurt who remember me. And yourself, my dear friend, keep in remembrance.—Your grateful pupil,

Fred Leighton.

Translation.]

2 Orme Square, Bayswater, London,
June 30, 1861.

My dear Friend,—Forgive my not having thanked you sooner for your kind note. The same thing has happened to me as to you: work has left me but little leisure for writing. Now, however, my hearty thanks for the open sincerity with which you have spoken of my latest work, I am only sorry that you have not gone into it even more closely. I shall endeavour in my present works to diminish the excessive mannerism of the lines, which will be all the easier for me as I am now painting principally from nature; in my last picture the subject permitted that but little. In any case I hope, dear master, that you will always speak to me with the same candour; it is the best proof to me that I still possess your friendship.

I am extremely eager to see how far your works have got on. Amongst them, however, my dear friend, keep in remembrance your grateful pupil,

Fred Leighton.

P.S.—I notice with regret that already I do not write a German letter with my former fluency.

In a letter to his sister, Mrs. Matthews, January 24, 1860, Leighton wrote: "I am horrified to hear the account you give of Mrs. Browning. I knew she was a confirmed invalid, but had no idea that one of her lungs was already gone! What will poor Browning do if she dies? He adores her, you know."

London, July 1861.

Dearest Mammy,—Thanks for your kind letter, which I have been unable to answer till now. I had heard of poor Browning's bereavement; we were all very much shocked at it, knowing, as we do, how entirely irreparable his loss is. I wrote a few lines to him that he might know how sincerely I grieved with him; I don't at all know what were the circumstances of her death, we have no particulars.

Leighton undertook to design the monument over Mrs. Browning's grave in the English Cemetery at Florence. The work appealed to him in every sense, and remains as a permanent memorial of those friendships which made the years spent in Italy so full, so rich, so entrancing. With reference to the monument Browning writes:—

Chez M. Laraison,
Ste. Marie, Près Pornic, Loire Inférieure,
August 30, 1863.